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.G.')S62. 



PUBLICATIONS 

OF THE 

NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 

BULLETIN No. 6 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTORY 
IN A DEMOCRACY 



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CLIO, MUSE OF HISTORY 
Mo.NTMENT UNVEILEn AT GUILFORD BATTLE GROrXD, NEAR 

Greensboro, N. C, July 3, 19o9. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTORY 

IN A DEMOCRACY / 



BY 

Cr ALPHONSO SMITH 

Professor of the English Language 
University of North Carolina 



Ah Address delivered at the unveiling of a monument to the Muse 

of History on the Guilford Battle Ground, near 

Greensboro, N. C, July 3. 1909 



Raleigh, N. C. 

Edwards & Broughton Printing Company 

1909 



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THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 



J. Bkyan Grimes, Chairman. 
W. J. Peele, D. H. Hill, 

Thomas W. Blount, M. C. S. ISToble. 



R. D. W. Connor, Seci-etafy, Raleigh, N. C. 



n. OF 0. 

»llfi 141909 



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-^^>) 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTORY IN A DEMOCRACY 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

There is a day famous in the creed and practice of Chris- 
tendom known as All Saints' Day. On this day honor and 
reverence are paid without distinction to all the saints and 
martyrs who have gone before. At other times individual 
saints and individual martyrs have their individual days ; 
but on this great democratic day all saints and all martyrs, 
wherever their loyal dust may lie, receive their merited 
guerdon of praise and gratitude. It is a homage as honor- 
able to those that render it as to those that receive it, for it 
is a homage paid not so much to saints themselves as to the 
universal spirit of saintliness, not so much to martyrs as to 
the inner meaning of martyrdom. All Saints' Day has its 
secular counterpart in the day and in the occasion that have 
brought us together. The Fourth of July is for us and our 
posterity All Heroes' Day. And the monument which we 
have met to dedicate is a monument not to this hero or to 
that hero, but to the spirit of heroism which made them what 
they were. It symbolizes no detached date or occurrence in 
history. It is itself the august spirit of history. 

There is to my mind something peculiarly beautiful and 
suggestive in the thought that this Greek figure is henceforth 
to keep watch and ward over this historic field. Beneath the 
shadow of this figure Socrates talked and Plato dreamed and 
Aristotle reasoned. Into those eyes Sappho looked as she 
sang herself into the heart-history of the world. Around the 
base of this figure, in Athenian portico or in Attic grove, 
Greek boys and girls gathered to hear again the story of Helen 
and Paris and Ulysses. From its pedestal outward Pericles 
spread the splendor of a democracy which has served as bea- 
con light for all democracies. The far-off Queen of Sweden 
cherishes as an unpurchasable heritage one of these Greek 



figures which the mutations of history have transferred from 
Athens to Stockholm. 

This historic figure, ladies and gentlemen, could not have 
plaved the part that it has played in human thought and in 
national progress unless it symbolized some universal truth. 
The other eight muses have had their day, but this figure 
lives on, Eeceding nations catch glimpses of it and are 
stirred to renewed effort. Youthful nations interpret it in 
terms of practical patriotism and of constructive idealism. 
It beckons to poets and philosophers, to statesmen and his- 
torians, giving a wider horizon to their thought and a finer 
unity to their concepts. Every discovery of an historical 
truth, every refutation of an historical error, every contribu- 
tion by word or deed to a nation's story is a leaf added to the 
laurel chaplet around the brow of the Muse of History. Jef- 
ferson saw this figure when he wrote the Declaration of In- 
dependence. It was shield and buckler to the great Wash- 
ington. It was with Cornelius Harnett when he defied the 
power of Tryon. It stood at Charlotte and at Halifax. It 
was by the side of William R. Davie when he laid the foun- 
dations of the University of North Carolina. And I pray 
God that when the things of sense grew dim to the fading 
eyes of the patriots who fell here, this immortal figure may 
have passed before their vision as a herald of the time when 
their memory should be pedestaled in triumph and their 
example become a nation's heritage. 

To the Greek mind statviary was not only a thing of beauty 
and a joy forever: it was the outward and visible sign of an 
inward and abiding truth. A study of this statue will show 
that thei'e are two underlying conceptions which have served 
to vitalize and perpetuate it through all the centuries. 

The first great truth that the Greek artist wrought into the 
l)ose and grouping of this figure is the vital relationship that 
should ever exist between the present and the past. When- 
ever a Greek looked upon this figure he observed that the 
single scroll in the uplifted hand had been taken from the 



sheaf of scrolls in. the casket behind. The single scroll, the 
scroll that the Muse of History is reading, represents present 
time ; the scrolls in the casket represent past time. The 
present, therefore, is included in the past, for it is the 
product of the past ; and out of the treasures of the past a 
progressive nation must seek the meaning and conduct of the 
present. 

It was this unbroken continuity of history, this duty of 
the present to recogiiize its filial obligation to the past, that 
drew from Tennyson one of his most characteristic messages : 

"Love thou thy land, with love far-brought 
From out the storied past, and used 
Within the jjresent, but transfused 
Through future time by power of thought." 

In his great essay on The Meaning of History Frederic 
Harrison defines the past as "that power which to understand 
is strength, which to repudiate is weakness." The motto of 
our efficient State Historical Commission will henceforth find 
an eloquent advocate on this field: 

"The roots of the present lie deep in the past, and nothing 
in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the 
present came to be what it is." 

A democracy, fellow-citizens, can not afford to be ungrate- 
ful. Built as it is on loyal service and patriotic sacrifice, 
the day of its forgetting will be the day of its undermining. 
Other nations trace their origin back through a long series of 
successful and unsuccessful wars. We find our national 
genesis in a single war ; and the measure of our greatness and 
stability will be the measure of our gratitude to the men who 
made Yorktown possible. 

I wish also to enter my protest here against the lifeless 
.and mechanical way in which our Eevolutionary history is 
so frequently taught. The purely scientific method of cause 
and effect has its rightfid place in colleges and universities, 
but whenever the Kevolutionary War is interpreted to youth- 
ful minds in terms merely of great industrial or social or 



political nioN'einents and not in terms also of personal heroism 
and individnal initiative, the actors in the strnggle seem 
mere puppets. They are hut the playthings of irresistible 
external forces. There is no charm or personal a])peal in 
the story thus told. There is information, it may be, but 
no inspiration. No great literature of stimulant song and 
story will ever spring from our Revolutionary history unless 
that history is taught in terms of individual heroism on the 
one side and individual gratitude on the other. 

There are those, however, who say — or who used to say — 
that the lesson of relatechiess to the past and of consequent in- 
debtedness can not appropriately be taught by the Battle of 
Guilford Court House. It is not my purpose to go into his- 
torical details, but the iSTorth Carolinian who accurately in- 
forms himself of what took place here on March 15, 1781, 
and who does not thrill with ]>ride and gratitude is unworthy 
of his citizenship. One hundred and twenty-eight years ago 
there was a rail fence yonder and in front of it an open field. 
On this side of the fence lay the North Carolina militia 
under Eaton and Butler. Across the open field, advancing 
from west to east, charged the flower of the English army. 
There are elements of pathos as well as of glory in the scene. 
These f oepien spoke the same language ; they knew by heart 
the same prayers ; their institutions were the same ; Shake- 
speare and the English Bible were the common heritage of 
both; and both were equally proud of their Anglo-Saxon 
blood and of what it had accomplished. But these ISTorth 
Carolina militiamen had never seen an English soldier be- 
fore, nor had they been present at a battle. They had shot 
rabbits, squirrels, and an occasional fox, but no larger game. 
If they succeed gloriously there will be no promotion, for 
they are not professional soldiers. If they fall, the only note 
taken of it will be the widowed cry of some desolate woman 
as she fronts the future alone. 

If the North Carolina militia, with thoughts like these 
stirring at their hearts, can hold their ground and reserve 



their fire till the English army, disciplined on a hundred 
battlefields, has come within easy shooting range, if they can 
stand the ordeal of merely waiting and then pull their trig- 
gers with steady aim, — they will have done the bravest deed 
that either army on that eventful field can boast. Let his- 
tory answer. Captain Dugald Stewart, of Scotland, who 
led his men across the open field, says :^ , . 

, ''In the advance we received a very deadly fire from the 
Irish line [he means the Scotch-Irish N"orth Carolinians] of 
the Ajnerican Army. One half of the Highlanders dropped 
on that spot." Brown, in his History of the Highland Clans, 
says : "The Americans [the untrained jSTorth Carolina mili- 
tia], covered by the fence in their front, reserved their fire 
until the British were within thirty or forty paces, at which 
distance they opened a most destructive fire, which annihi- 
lated nearly one third of Colonel Webster's Brigade."^ 

The following letter was written by an American soldier 
shortly after the battle and published in the New Jersey 
State Gazette of April 11, 1781: 

"The enemy were so beaten that we should have disputed 
the victory could we have saved our artillery, but the Gen- 
eral thought that it was a necessary sacrifice. The spirits of 
the soldiers would have been afiected if the cannon had been 
sent off the field, and in this woody country cannon can not 
always be sent off at a critical moment. 

"The General, by his abilities aud good conduct and by his 
activity and bravery in the field, has gained the confidence 
and respect of the army and the country to an amazing de- 
gree. You would, from the countenances of our men, believe 
they had been decidedly victorious. They are in the highest 
spirits, and appear most ardently to wish to engage the euemy 
again. The enemy are much embarrassed by their wounded. 
When we consi(^er the nakedness of our troops and of course 



1 See Caruthers's Life of Caldwell, p. 237. 

- Both of these citations may be found in A Memorial Volume of the 
Guilford Battle Ground Company, prepared by Judge David Schenck 
and published in 1893 by Reece & Elam, Greensboro, N. C. 



their waut of discipline, their nimibers, and the loose, irregu- 
lar manner in which we came into the field, I think we have 
done wonders. I rejoice at our success, and were our exer- 
tions and sacrifices published to the world as some command- 
ing officers would have published them, we should have re- 
ceived more applause than our modesty claims."^ 

These letters from actual participants in the battle tell 
their own story. They do more. Thej make it plain that 
for a quarter of a century the most unselfish form of prac- 
tical j)atriotisra exhibited in ISTorth Carolina has been ex- 
hibited by the Guilford JBattle Ground Company. With but 
one meager appropriation from the National Government, 
with an inadequate appropriation from the State Govern- 
ment, they have exhumed the bodies of our heroic dead, they 
have redeemed their memories, they have made the name of 
Guilford Court House known and honored where it was un- 
known before, and they have brought to the historic past of 
^STorth Carolina a new meaning and an added renown. 
Surely there is no place in this State where a monument, 
whose design is to invest the past with new significance and 
the lu'esent with a larger sense of responsibility, could be so 
fitly dedicated as on this spot and by this company. 

There is a clause in the letter last cited that suggests the 
second teaching of this monument. The writer says: 

"Were our exertions and sacrifices published to the world 
as some commanding officers would have published them, we 
should have received more aj^jjlause than our modesty 
claims." 

In other words, there had come to the writer of this letter 
a dim realization of the fact that the writing of history is 
part of the making of history, that the deed of an individual 
or of an army or of a nation is comparatively incomplete and 
ineffective unless ])crpetuated in writing. This great truth 
the Greeks were also the first to apply in a national way. 



3 1 am indebted for this letter to my friend, Mr. B. C. Gregory, 
Superintendent of the Public Schools of Chelsea, Mass. 



History, as represented by Greek genius in the design of this 
statue, is a recorded history, a history written down on leg- 
ible and accessible scrolls, to be read of all men. The writ- 
ten scrolls in the casket and the written scroll in the hand 
are evidence that to the Greek consciousness Clio was the 
tutelary deity not of history enacted but of history recorded. 
Other deities presided over the events that went to the mak- 
ing of a nation's history. To the Muse of History was as- 
signed the honor of garnering in written form the example 
of the past for the emulation or avoidance of the present. 
ISTo such conception could have originated among a people 
who had not themselves attained a rare degree of civilization, 
who had not themselves realized their grateful indebtedness 
to the past, or who did not feel at the same time a sense of 
trusteeship for the future. 

The lines written by the President of the Guilford Battle 
Ground Company* express with accuracy and beauty the sec- 
ond teaching of this monument : 

"As sinking silently to night, 
Noon fades insensibly, 
So truth's fair phase assumes the haze 
And hush of history. 

But lesser lights relieve the dark 

Dumb dreariness of night, 
And o'er the past historians east 

At least a stellar light." 

It is this great truth that we dedicate afresh to-day. The 
darkness that has rested upon this field shall be dispelled 
and the starlight of history shall irradiate it with imperish- 
able splendor. If I were to call the roll of the nations fore- 
most in history and ask how their historic past escaped the 
thralldom of the tyrannous years and why it lives on in un- 
diminished youth and beauty, the Muse of History would an- 
swer that these nations have themselves realized the dutv of 



4 Major Joseph M. Morehead, to whom alone belongs the credit for 
this monument and who for seventeen years has labored unselfishly and 
unceasingly to establish the truth of North Carolina history. 



10 

preserving tlieir past for the guidance and eurichment of 
their future. By history and biograph}', by song and story, 
by epitaph and mohn'ment, they have .made of their past an 
eveir living present. 

The glory of Greece lives forever in the Iliad and Odyssey 
and is inscribed on a thousand marble memorials. Ronie 
immortalized her past in the ^"Eneid. England's greatest 
historian was Shakespeare, and Westminster Abbey is to- 
day her most eloquent spokesman. United Germany points 
to her Siegesallee. Scotland found her world-interpreter in 
the stories and poems of Walter Scott. 

America has made a beginning, but only a beginning. No 
writer has yet realized the possibilities of world-appeal that 
lie in our Revolutionary War as Shakespeare realized the 
possibilities in the far less significant Wars of the Roses, or 
Scott in the border skirmishes between Lowlander and High- 
lander, or Schiller in the tragedy of the Thirty Years War, 
or Victor Hugo in the single battle of Waterloo. One great 
Revolutionary novel or drama in which the contributions of 
both the South an^ the North — of South Carolina, iSTorth 
Carolina, and Yirginia as well as Massachusetts, New York, 
and Pennsylvania^should be portrayed Avith equal insight 
and with compelling power, would bind this nation together 
in the indissoluble bonds of a commcm sympathy and a com- 
mon historic pride. Such a work will never be written, nor 
would it be acclaimed if written, until each State recognizes 
the value of its own historic material. No writer can be 
just to a State until that State is just to itself. 

National unity and stability must be built upon a founda- 
tion of common sympathies, sacrifices, and triumphs. Every 
battlefield of the Revolution, where American valor was 
tested and not found wanting, will yet become a link in the 
golden chain of national brotherhood. The men who fought 
here and the men who have since wrought here are nation- 
builders. Slowly but surely the truth of history is widen- 
ing its domain, and a heroic past is returning to make a 



11 

heroic and united present. This Battlefield, already a Mecca 
of patriotism, will yet become in the expanding life of this 
commonwealth a stepping-stone to a larger national con- 
sciousness and a chapter in the epic of a nation's birth. I 
dedicate this monument, therefore, to the spirit of a just 
and impartial history. In gratitude and love I dedicate it 
to the splendor of the past and to the ever-widening service 
of the future. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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